Clean-up still goes on a year after deluge

Eleven households are still waiting to move back into their flood-hit homes. Picture / Alan Gibson

Almost a year after nearly 800 properties were damaged in the worst flooding in Tauranga's history, the clean-up continues.

It is expected to take another year to fix all the damage inflicted on the city on May 18, 2005, when 347mm of rain fell in 24 hours - Tauranga's highest autumn rainfall since 1898.

Four hundred people were evacuated from their homes as more than a metre of water swept down hills into low-lying areas, in some cases bringing houses down with it.

Miraculously, no one was hurt or killed, but 39 families were left without a place to live after their properties were demolished.

Eleven households are still in temporary accommodation.

A tour of flood-hit areas in Otumoetai and Bureta yesterday showed the scars of the disaster still very much evident.

Muddy lots without vegetation lay where houses once stood and bulldozers worked to prepare a bank for reinforcement below precariously perched homes.

Much work has already been done and much money - about $7 million - spent on the clean-up.

Staff from Tauranga City Council, which organised the tour, pointed out several sites where large wooden retaining walls had been built.

The first, on Shelley St and finished last week, was 4m high and cost $300,000.

It was built with money pooled by property owners with houses above and below that they received from the Earthquake Commission.

The commission accepted 625 claims from Tauranga residents, who made more than 2000 insurance claims in the wake of the disaster.

Flood-recovery manager Terry Wynyard said the posts for the wall had been driven 8m into the ground and bolts on the fence were capable of sustaining an eight-tonne load.

"The likelihood of that wall failing is zip," he said.

Maintenance of the wall was the property owners' responsibility.

The council has bought some properties deemed total losses and is turning them into reserves.

It hopes to re-sell others to recoup losses once retaining and earth work have been done to make them safe.

Upgrades of the stormwater system are planned over 10 years to prevent future flooding disasters, including a $4.3 million tunnel to divert stormwater into Tauranga Harbour

Mr Wynyard said the immediate work would take another year to complete, rejecting criticism that the council had been slow in the clean-up.

"I don't know what else council could've done," he said. "We responded effectively, in my opinion, to the actual Civil Defence emergency while it occurred. And we've been very responsive through the recovery programme."

David and Corinna Greaves, who lost their home on Landscape Rd when a bank behind it gave way, have been in a rental property since the floods.

They have bought another house about 4km from their old property.

Mr Greaves said he was happy to remain in the area, with one stipulation: "I didn't want to be on a hill."